1954 Rolls Royce Silver Dawn

I like painting older cars and motorcycles. The older cars have lovely lines and shapes and the motorcycles have wonderful mechanical details. There's tremendous light and colour to play with, copper pipes bathed in sunlight for example, and age gives them a distinguished patina.

This is a painting I've just completed of George Formby's 1954 Rolls Royce Silver Dawn. It's acrylic paint on art card, A3 size. Actually, I've been working with acrylics for a while now but, to be honest, I'm not sure I like them. The end result is appealing but the paint dries awfully quickly which I find somewhat restrictive. I love mediums where you can move the colours around and work the paint, as you can with watercolour, or even gouache. I may move back to gouache in the future, a paint I love to work with.

George bought the Silver Dawn in September 1954, new of course, and sold it a few months later. He certainly got through his cars (and bikes) did George! Unlike the second owner who kept the car for over 50 years. The wonderful thing about this Silver Dawn is that it's still around, has its original registration, PGY 324, its original paintwork, and lots of other details like its original radio. Perhaps it needs a CD player so that one may sing along to 'I'm the Emperor of Lancashire' whilst motoring through Wigan?

The car's colours are wonderful, aren't they? A 'shell grey' that enchantingly changes with the ambient light, and a 'midnight blue' that is sumptuously dark.

I hope you like the picture, I certainly do. I planning a picture of George's Norton International in the near future - the two pictures would complement each other perfectly.